ZIP code 26524

ZIP 26524 is a very small community in Preston County, West Virginia, with 135 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #642 of 738 ranked by population — larger than 13% of them. The median age here is 59.1 years against 39.1 nationally, a markedly older profile that usually tracks retirees staying put and younger households leaving for work. At this population the ACS sample is small, so the margin of error around every dollar figure below is wide — treat the numbers as a band, not a point, and expect them to move between annual releases without the place itself changing.

Households in ZIP 26524 earn a median of $11,438 a year, 85.4% below the national figure of $78,538. The median is the midpoint household, not an average, so a handful of very high earners cannot drag it upward the way they distort a mean. Poverty reaches 80% of residents here, well above the 12.4% national rate, which is the single clearest signal in this dataset that median income here is carried by a narrow band of households.

The typical owner-occupied home in ZIP 26524 is valued at $157,000, 48.3% below the national figure, while median gross rent runs not published a month. The home-price-to-income ratio works out to 13.7×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is out of reach on local earnings alone and the ownership market leans on outside income, equity or dual high earners. 74.2% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, so the market leans toward owners. The rent line includes utilities paid by the tenant, a definition worth remembering when comparing it against a landlord's quoted rate.

Home values sit at 13.7× median household income, far past the 3.9× national mark, so ownership costs here are set by something other than local wages — second homes, retirees with equity, or commuters earning elsewhere. A median age of 59.1 puts ZIP 26524 well into retirement-weighted territory, which pulls median household income down even where household wealth is high, because retirement draws are counted differently from wages.

The Census withheld gross rent for ZIP 26524 because the sample was too thin to publish at this geography. Those values were suppressed at the source, not lost in our dataset, and we do not model a replacement. Everything else on this page comes straight from the ACS 2019-2023 ACS 5-year tables.

ZIP 26524 is tabulated inside Preston County, West Virginia, one of 14 ZIP areas the Census publishes for that county and 738 across West Virginia. This is one of the smallest tabulated ZIP areas in the state, the kind of rural route where a single subdivision or farm cluster accounts for most addresses. County assignment on this page follows the largest share of the ZIP's land area, which matters where a delivery route crosses a county line: mail addressed to 26524 can be handled by a post office in a neighbouring county even though the tabulation area is filed here.

Against its own county, 26524 reports a median household income of $11,438, 79% below the $54,604 county median, and 79% below the $54,285 typical WV ZIP. Owner-occupied homes are valued at a median of $157,000, close to the county figure and 30% above the statewide ZIP median. Rent is reported gross — the contract amount plus tenant-paid utilities — at not published a month, which is why it reads higher than the advertised rent on a listing for the same unit.

West Virginia charges 6% statewide, and local governments overlapping 26524 may add county, city or special-district levies on top. We publish the state floor for this ZIP rather than guessing a combined figure, because ZIP boundaries and taxing-district boundaries were drawn for different purposes and do not line up.

Everything above comes from the Census Bureau American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates for this ZIP Code Tabulation Area, with sales tax rates traced to the state revenue agency. Five-year estimates pool sixty months of responses, so they are stable enough to compare 26524 with its neighbours but always trail the current year, and any value the Census suppressed for sample size is shown as unpublished rather than filled in with a model.